In Defense of the Red Army

[KozmasSchmierfink]

Even with a successful coup the empire’s falling apart and separatist/nationalist tendencies have metastasized in the Baltics, Caucasus, the ‘stans and even Ukraine though that’s more nuanced and complex. To hold the system together would have required the buy-in of the controllers of state enterprises and the chairmen of the various constituent republics, oblasts, okrugs and so on along with local forces whether those were army or interior ministry or KGB border forces. So how do you get their buy-in? Autonomy of some sort. And it would be obvious to any but the most ardent true believers at this point that if the Tsentr is conceding more authority in order to maintain the illusion of control then local control is really what matters.
But when you ceded central control then local decisions can get out of hand and local commanders become local powers and hold the loyalty of their troops by having access to food, money and other rents to distribute to them and their families. Hence oligopolies and caesarism.